Oblivion’ loud, confusing and fun

Sunday

Apr 21, 2013 at 6:00 AM

Family Filmgoer

PG-13 — As long as narrative clarity isn’t a major requirement for their moviegoing enjoyment, sci-fi-loving teens will get thrills from this striking film. And their younger, quicker minds may do better at sussing out the frustratingly obscure plot.

In a prologue, we see a memory dream about a couple (Tom Cruise and Olga Kurylenko) in love and visiting the Empire State Building. Then, in a voice-over by the protagonist Jack (Cruise), we learn that his recurring dream may or may not be real, since his memory was wiped clean not long ago.

It is the year 2077. Jack lives and works, alongside his occasional lover Victoria or Vika (Andrea Riseborough), on a “tech” station just above the Earth’s atmosphere. The Earth, he explains, was destroyed in a protracted nuclear war with alien invaders called Scavs (short for scavengers). Though humans supposedly won the war, they’ve had to abandon the planet for a colony on Saturn’s largest moon.

Jack and Vika are one of several teams stationed around the Earth to extract ocean waters for transport to the colony. It is also Jack’s job to fly down to Earth each day and make sure the warrior drones function and keep the remaining Scavs in check. Or something like that.

But Jack has doubts about what Sally (Melissa Leo) back at mission control tells them via computer. He has an affection for Earth and, unlike Vika, isn’t eager to leave. When a spaceship crashes onto Earth, Jack rescues the lone survivor, Julia (Kurylenko). She tells him they have a past connection and he is inclined to ignore Sally and Vika, and learn the truth for himself.

It does emerge, but amid so much ear-shattering music and computer-enhanced imagery the details are never clear. Though it shares a similar plot with “The Host” (PG-13), “Oblivion” is actually kinda fun.

THE BOTTOM LINE: “Oblivion” contains little graphic violence, but a lot of loud aerial warfare and gunfights. One swimming scene involves backview nudity. Jack and Vika work together, and also share a bed in their “tech” station. The script includes rare profanity.

“Scary Movie 5” PG-13 — This fifth installment in the “Scary Movie” series barely retains its PG-13 rating and tries way too hard in general, spoofing movies that in some cases are already unwitting self-parodies. But that might not deter high-schoolers into broad humor.

Ashley Tisdale and Simon Rex play Jody and Dan, a couple whose life seems beset by the weird and occult, albeit lifted from other films. Among them: the “Paranormal Activity” (R) series, with its overnight videos of “visitations”; the latest “Evil Dead” (R) remake, with its dead cats along with young people (in this case a Bible study group) possessed by demons and committing bloody chain saw mutilations; “Mama” (PG-13, 2013), featuring squirrelly stepdaughters and their wiggy phantom pal; “Black Swan” (R, 2010), with its bizarre eye makeup, anorexic dancers and lesbian love scene; “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” (PG-13, 2011), with its brainy chimps; and even “Inception” (PG-13, 2010), with its hallucinatory dreamscapes.

Cameos by Charlie Sheen, Mike Tyson, Bow Wow, Snoop Dogg, Lindsay Lohan, Darrell Hammond and Molly Shannon help a little, but most of this is so heavy-handed the laughs get pounded right out of it.

THE BOTTOM LINE: An R rating seems more appropriate, as the film brims with penis jokes, explicit sexual behaviors and occasional strong profanity. The script includes rare but distinctive use of the N-word, the F-word and the B-word, and an even worse word scrawled on a restroom mirror. Other sexual humor involves dogs humping and a human trying to mount pieces of furniture. We see a guy in a Santa suit with a bare behind. The chimps engage in toilet humor.